iCocker on Tue Oct 13, 2009 8:48 am
I tend not to completly with you Brian on this. Though this is not a fast rule on painted section AFVs it's a trend to leave the tank on a piece of wood for the simple reason to give more inpact on the work and weathering. Remember that tanks have tracks and there is at least 7 steps of paintwork to acheive the weathering effect on tracks. Putting terrain might 'hide' all that work as it would blend alltogether. Look at it this way lets have a white camo AFV and you put it on a snaowy terrain, it would blend in and loose the impact, different then showing it of on a dark/black finished plint, putting aside that this model is not a diorama.
On the other hand when imployed 'many' overlook the terrain for the simple reason that it logical to spend tens of hours painting and detailing the AFV then one get frustrated and rush the final job, the terrain ... the same thing implies when adding a tank crew/rider to the scene, nothing can be overlooked. It is annoying to see a splendid finished tank then the terrain, turps, equipment or crew are not up to standard!
On a different note, then there is a choice of plint of wood for creating more depth and effects, a desert coloured, white washed or any other light coloured AFV would give better impact on a dark wood like vange, mahagony or black finished plint, then on another hand a dark finished camo, OD or heavily mud weathered vehicle might look prettier on a lighter coloured natural wood. Personally I try to avoid the very light coloured plints like beech, pine etc in natural colour, first because these are soft wood and tend to get dented easily and second as normally on display halls that have strong light or poor light, these damn wood would strick the eye more then the model!
Might be personal opinion on this issue but finally we are 'advertising' and showing off our final work, so the presentation is as important as the amount of hours spend producing it. Why not put a couple of minutes more effort in choosing the right way to finish the model!
Ivan